The Science of Politics

Despite calls for politics to return to kitchen table economic issues, the culture war rages on. That could be a product of the distinct incentives facing politicians, who have to win elections, and media actors, who just have to keep your attention. Aakaash Rao and Shakked Noy find that cable news outlets talk more about culture war issues while candidates favor economics. Every minute cable news spends covering the culture war, they gain audience from people who would otherwise prefer entertainment. When they talk economics, people switch channels. And where cable news penetrated more, people started seeing crime, immigration, and race and gender as more important than economics—and candidates eventually shifted their behavior to match. It's not just about the part cable news played in the rise of the culture war but also about how actors seeking to mobilize rather than win converts might be the source of our wider polarizing shifts.

Donald Trump has taken extraordinary actions to redirect or ignore congressional appropriations, from dismantling foreign aid to making the Education Department a ghost town. But how unique are Trump’s efforts to avoid spending when he does not favor it? Kevin Angell compares what Congress appropriated to what agencies actually spent over decades, finding that presidents have long moved spending toward their preferences. Even after impoundment controls, presidents found ways of not spending money they never requested from Congress. Trump is more blatant and could be more extreme, but administrations have long used their tools to obtain some power of the purse from Congress.

How unique is Donald Trump’s trajectory as a president born of backlash? What should we make of Trump following Barack Obama? Julia Azari finds that backlash presidents like Trump tend to follow transformative presidents like Barack Obama who represent changes to the American racial order. And the backlash presidents commonly face impeachment as they are seen as transgressive figures. She finds parallels in the previous pairings of Andrew Johnson after Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon after Lyndon Johnson. It puts Trump, the American presidency, and our racial politics in useful historical context.

A year before the midterms, quarterly fundraising reports are already reshuffling expectations and causing some candidates to drop out. And candidates are spending almost as much raising money as they collect. That’s because in congressional primaries and general elections, the top fundraiser still wins 92 percent of the time. Danielle Thomsen finds that candidates are raising money earlier and in larger amounts than ever. And everything from who runs for office to who rules in Congress is now governed by money, even though most of the value is in signaling rather than actually using it to communicate with voters.

Many thought the second Trump administration would feature a confrontation between a Supreme Court intent on limiting executive discretion and an empowered president flaunting the rules. Instead, the Supreme Court has largely acquiesced to Trump’s moves, using the shadow docket to overturn lower court actions limiting Trump, even those from Republican judges. Adam Bonica finds that Trump has sought to purge and cut more liberal agencies but has been repeatedly shot down by lower courts. Yet the Supreme Court alone has often sided with the administration, making the courts much less of a check on executive power.

Join journalist Matt Iglesias and political scientist Stephen Tellis as they dive into the Democratic Party's challenges and possible futures. They tackle whether moderating ideological stances could win back disenchanted voters and discuss the potential of an 'abundance' agenda focused on local impacts. Iglesias highlights the pressure of factional dynamics, while Tellis explores how the conservative legal movement is reshaping executive power. The conversation navigates the path toward a successful Democratic reset by 2028, considering pivotal strategy shifts.

Texas, California, and Missouri are moving forward with plans for mid-decade redistricting to gain partisan advantage—with other states threatening to follow. They are not hiding the motive: President Trump asked Texas to gain Republicans seats and Governor Newsom is saying he needs to retaliate. Just how much has gerrymandering gained the parties in Congress? And how much is likely to change now? Eric McGhee finds that both parties are increasingly extreme in gerrymandering but that prior mid-decade redistricting gains have been small. Daniel Kolliner finds that Republican control of redistricting has led to large increases in seat share, with Democratic control gains limited to large states.

President Trump has pressured and attacked the Federal Reserve and is now trying to replace governors. What are the consequences if the Fed is losing independence and moving toward presidential control? Cristina Bodea finds that the Fed was never the most independent and is becoming less so in the face of public pressure. That could make a normally conservative institution move toward enabling inflation and government spending. We also talk about international comparisons, populist pressure on central banks globally, leader gender, and the role of tariffs and democratic backsliding.

As the next AI cycle begins, state and national governments are trying to keep up. And AI policy now matters for energy, health, education, foreign, and economic development policy as well. What can we learn from the early AI legislation? Chinnu Parinandi finds that partisan alignments and institutional capacity shape where and how consumer protection versus economic development AI policies appear in the states. Heonuk Ha finds an AI boom in congressional legislation with key thematic clusters—from innovation and security to data governance and healthcare.

American students are falling behind while local school boards are preoccupied with culture war controversies. Is local democratic control of schools a detriment to improving student outcomes? Vlad Kogan finds that school boards regularly prioritize the needs of teachers and administrators over students. Elections are unrepresentative and sometimes partisan and drive schools to distraction. He draws surprisingly positive lessons from post-Katrina New Orleans and Chicago school closures and argues for on-cycle elections that grade schools on student achievement.